Eight of Hull’s points came from penalty goals – and Jake Connor also missed once – but Powell blamed his team’s “poor performance” for the end result.

“Obviously we didn’t handle the start well,” said the coach, whose side trailed 12-0 after seven minutes.

“We gave an intercept try away when we had created a little bit of an opportunity. They hurt you those.

“They score again soon after and it’s 12-0.

“I thought we did well to battle our way back into it and to be 14-12 at half-time I thought we can re-set a little bit here and get back on track.

“When we got to that point when we were in front, the way we tried to manage that I thought was crazy to be honest.

“We were off-loading the ball and we made an error, they get a penalty, kick the two points and we consistently gave penalties away after that.

“I thought they just beat us with a fair bit of intent right at the start and were a little bit too good for us today.”

Powell added: “We’ve got to make sure we deal with this well and we have an opportunity against these boys in a couple of weeks and we need to make sure there’s a fire burning in our belly as they have beaten us twice now and we’ve played poorly both times.”

Tigers visit Leeds Rhinos on Friday and Powell said they now have to focus on staying top of the table.

He said: “There’s no point worrying about this now, it has gone.

“One thing we have done is when we’ve lost we’ve responded pretty well.

“We have to do that again. It’s disappointing to lose a big game, but we must bounce back quickly and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”